The Olive Conspiracy (6 page)

“
Yes, Majesty.” Tivon, Rivka’s
second-in-command in the Royal Guard, scratched his beard. “Knifed
in the back down at the docks, the night before you all left for
Imbrio.”

“
Wow.”

“
The body wasn’t found until after
you were gone.”

“
Wow,” said the queen again, rather
stupidly.

“
Whoever killed him dressed him up
like a foreign sailor,” added another guard, “hoping we’d assume it
was just someone who’d come in from the river and gotten killed in
a tavern brawl.”

“
But because of the report from
that woman at the Frangipani Table, we got suspicious,” said
Tivon.

“
And rightfully so!” Shulamit
exclaimed.

“
We thought maybe she did it—” said
the second guard, but stopped talking when he saw the queen’s
face.

“
Don’t worry,” Tivon reassured her.
“I know that doesn’t make sense with everything in the report on
her, and besides, she takes in boarders and they swear she was
inside the whole night until she left for work in the
morning.”

“
Right…” said Shulamit. “She
wouldn’t come and report him and
then
kill him. Not after
telling
us
everything he had on her anyway!”

“
Still, we sent a patrol youth to
watch her restaurant,” said the second guard.

Shulamit rolled her eyes. “So what else do you
have?”

“
We went to his house and collected
all his papers,” Tivon answered, “figuring that if he’s
blackmailing one woman, maybe he’s blackmailing another? Or more
than another. Could be many victims.”

“
I’ll look at them on my throne.”
Shulamit shook her head as she walked out of the sun. She was
surprised as anything, but her blood raced in anticipation of
launching herself full speed at this new puzzle.

***

“
I’ll tell you one thing,” said
Shulamit from her throne to Rivka, who was standing beside her.
“Ezra definitely knew how to keep himself entertained.” There was a
look on her face somewhere between unimpressed and
withering.

“
Why, what’s that one?” Rivka
peered over at the paper on top of the pile on Shulamit’s lap.
Tivon, as requested, had delivered all the papers the guards
investigating Ezra’s murder had retrieved from his rented
room.

“
A list of all the women Avi the
cheese man was visiting on the sly.”

Rivka lifted an eyebrow. “Are they suspects? Or
just Avi himself?”

“
You look it over. You’re head of
the police, right?” Shulamit passed her the paper.

The captain scanned it briefly. “More than half
of these women are married.”

“
How many?”

Rivka counted to herself in her native
language. “Five?”

Shulamit chuckled bitterly. “Wow. I had no idea
cheese was so popular with married women.” Rivka made an odd sound,
and Shulamit looked over to her quickly. “What?”

“
Isaac has made a joke you don’t
want to hear,” said Rivka dismissively.

“
Never mind,” said Shulamit archly.
She was smart enough to put two and two together. “Do you see any
of those women going down to the river docks late at night and
stabbing Ezra?”

Rivka considered each possibility. “No, not
really, but if pushed to desperation…”

“
So we have six suspects just from
this one paper alone.”

“
At least he kept very good notes.
What’s that one?”

“
Oh, this?” Shulamit held up
another paper. “Ezra threatened to tell this man’s rich wife that
he had a young mistress over in Ir Ilan. He got a lot of money out
of him before the wife died and he didn’t have a reason to pay
anymore.”

“
That one is then probably not
involved,” mused Rivka.

“
We don’t even know that Avi and
the Cheesettes are involved, not necessarily,” Shulamit pointed
out. “These look like starter notes.”

“
Oh, like he maybe hadn’t
approached any of them yet?”

“
Right,” said Shulamit. “Look,
here’s what I think happened. I think he was on the take from the
man with the mistress. Then, when the wife died, Ezra lost his main
source of income. So he had to find someone else to
blackmail.”

“
And that’s why he was taking notes
on Avi,” said Rivka.

“
Exactly. Meanwhile, he found out
about Yael and bothered her too.”

“
Does it say how he found out about
her?”

Shulamit shook her head. “I haven’t gotten to
that part yet. Did you see this one?”

“
What is it?” asked
Rivka.

“
It’s notes from the Marquis’
servants. He was trying to figure out definitively if Liora and the
Marquis are a couple.”

Rivka snorted. “Is he kidding? Liora would pay
him
to
talk about her.”

“
Anyway, we know they had nothing
to do with the murder,” Shulamit pointed out. “They left on tour
right after Yom Kippur.” That was a week before Yael’s audience
with the queen in her sukkah.

“
What’s that one? It looks like a
map.”

Shulamit shifted papers around. “Mmm,” she
agreed, turning the paper slightly and studying it more closely.
“It’s a map of Perach. But I don’t know what all this mess is.” She
squinted and shook her head. “I don’t know; it looks familiar,
somehow.”

“
Well, you do run the
country.”

“
This line… these
patterns…”

With one arm folded across her midsection and
the other arm upright so that her fist rested against her nose,
Shulamit raked her memories. Those swirly bits. That pair of
streaks. Why did they look so familiar? Why did she feel like she’d
seen it before, what seemed like ages ago before the emotional
upheaval of visiting Imbrio again and seeing Carolina?

“
Oh my God!” Heat flared in
Shulamit’s cheeks. “Rivka, this makes
no
sense, but—Guard!
Who’s out there?”

One of the guards appeared at the doorway.
“Majesty?”

Shulamit held out one pointing finger. “Can you
please bring me my latest notes on our agricultural
pests?”

“
Absolutely, Majesty.” He
disappeared into the sunlight.

Rivka squinted at her. “I don’t get
it.”

“
You think
I
do?” Shulamit
skin tingled as she waited for the papers to show up and either
prove her wrong or show that she was absolutely right, thus opening
up nothing but a cartload of further questions. Both hands fidgeted
with the ends of her filmy, yellow scarf.

Shulamit felt like every second was bloated and
lazy until the guard reappeared. Where was he? Finally, the
requested papers arrived, and she tore into them with such ferocity
that several fell onto the floor and had to be
retrieved.

“
There!” she finally exclaimed
triumphantly.

“
What?” Rivka leaned over her
shoulder eagerly, and Shulamit heard a soft thud as Isaac leapt off
Riv’s shoulder onto the back of her throne to get a better
view.

“
The olive blight,” said Shulamit,
her lips barely moving as she tried to make sense of the completely
unexpected connection. “Ezra drew a map of the olive blight and put
it in the middle of his blackmail notes.”

“
Is there anything else on the
paper?” said Isaac in his normal voice.

Shulamit turned it over. “Oh, I’m so nervous,
I’m not thinking straight. This is the map I already
had.”

She flipped over the correct parchment. In
Ezra’s lazy scrawl, it said,

Imbrian man (Name: Rui?) *possibly
leader

Imbrian man with missing tooth.
Drinks like a fish

Perachi woman (from Lovely Valley?)
Money-minded

Unknown man (Light skinned.
Imbrian?)

Unknown woman (Perachi?)

Who is “André”?

“
There is
no way
this means
anything good.” Thoughts whirled through Shulamit’s mind, thoughts
that she was afraid to put to words. What did Imbrio have to do
with agricultural pests? What about—what about
Carolina
?

“
Malkeleh
,” said Isaac,
interrupting her mental maelstrom. “Let me see Ezra’s map
again.”

Shulamit flipped the paper back
over.

“
Look,” said Isaac. “His map—the
infestation goes down the river straight into the Lovely
Valley.”

Shulamit shook her head slowly and groped
around for Rivka’s hand. She clung to her friend’s arm with both
hands like it was a bellpull, then hugged it tightly to her chest.
“Whatever this is, we have to stop it. We have to stop
them
.”

6. Agent of the Crown

Rivka headed over to the Frangipani Table, her
own hastily scribbled copy of Ezra’s list tucked into her belt.
While Shulamit pored over the farm maps she’d spread all over the
floor of the throne room, Rivka wanted to get cracking on tracing
the criminals. She had years of practice at this, both as
Shulamit’s Captain of the Guard but also before that, on the road
as an independent bounty hunter and mercenary, and all her
instincts told her that the list was the key to
everything.

After all, it made the most sense—if Ezra had
stumbled onto some kind of international conspiracy, its
perpetrators would have every reason to silence him—even without
his likely threat of blackmail. His chosen “profession” just made
it worse.

There was no reason for the Imbrians to have
been at the Frangipani Table specifically, other than its
popularity, but she figured it was a good place to start. After
all, he
had
been there often enough to figure out that Yael
warranted further scrutiny, so maybe he spent enough time there for
such lucky guesses to be reasonable.

Men from the Royal Guard were milling around in
front of the restaurant when Rivka arrived. She heard “Look, the
Captain’s back!” and both of them stood up slightly
straighter.

Rivka, too, felt her posture straighten, and
the rest of her approach was a fluid swagger. “Peace.” She waved to
them. “You can go back to the palace now.”

“
Oh, but what about—?”

She shook her head dismissively. “She’s not the
one who knifed Ezra.”

The guards looked at each other, then back at
Rivka. “Yes, sir,” said one of them.

“
Just in case, I can stay if
you—”

“
No,” Rivka said simply. “You’re
relieved. Thank you!”

They treaded off down the road, and Rivka
entered the restaurant.

Patrons eating their lunch swiveled their heads
when they saw her. Since she knew they couldn’t see her smile at
them from behind her cloth mask, she waved slightly. After Lord
knew how many days of the place being under guard, she wanted them
to know this was a friendly visit. Questions only.

Yael was arm-deep inside a duck when Rivka
broached the kitchen. Her eyes widened when she saw the captain,
and she froze slightly.

Rivka showed both palms in reassurance. “It’s
fine, I sent them away.”

Yael exhaled, and her arm began moving around
inside the bird’s cavity once again. “They weren’t
that
bad,
but…”

“
I know,” said Rivka
sympathetically. “Bad for business.”

“
It’s hard enough trying to live up
to my husband’s memory without rumors flying around.” Yael found a
small handful of salt and rubbed it over the duck’s naked skin. “I
have to be twice as good as we were together, just to make sure
they think it’s the same. Those guards tried their best to be nice,
but…”

“
They thought you carved up Ezra
like one of your ducks.”

Yael nodded. “And the worst part was, I could
have… I mean, someone else in my situation might have. I couldn’t
kill a man, but another woman might.”

“
We’re looking into that,” said
Rivka, pulling the rolled-up copy of
t
he list
from
her belt as if unsheathing her sword. “When was the last time you
had any Imbrian customers?”

Yael’s brows descended. “Do you mean
anyone
from Imbrio or new people I didn’t
recognize?”

“
I’m not talking about people like
the chair-maker’s wife who’ve been here for years,” said Rivka.
“Not one Imbrian at a table full of Perachis either. Imbrians
eating together.”

“
I did have… these men… it was
during the holidays.” Yael frowned in thought. “I remember because
I was still taking reservations for breaking the fast.”

So sometime between Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur
, Rivka recorded mentally.
Maybe a week or so before
he bothered Yael.
“How many men?”

“
Two. No, three,” Yael corrected
herself. “I forgot about the third one because he wasn’t speaking
much. They had a Perachi woman with them, but I don’t think she was
from here. She didn’t say much either, except to help them order
their food if they didn’t know a Perachi word.”